Player grades, Games 31-40: Edmonton Oilers find themselves out of their depth after blueline injuries

Three and a half weeks ago, Oil Country was enjoying an extended honeymoon with sure-to-be Hall of Fame coach Ken Hitchcock. The Edmonton native had brought a breath of fresh air to the perennially-struggling Oilers and distinctly changed the narrative framing the situation with his unique mixture of sunshine, smoke-blowing, and encyclopaedic hockey knowledge.

I was myself experiencing a sunny disposition when writing the last segment review after Game 30, which happily coincided exactly with Hitchcock’s first 10 games behind the bench, providing a clear delineation between the old regime and the new. His early results were unimpeachable, with the Oilers posting their best results in shot prevention, goal prevention, and standings points in any segment dating back to the fall of 2017.

Alas, the follow-up segment had its own sharp delineation, when top-four defenders Oscar Klefbom and Kris Russell both got injured in the second period of Game 31. The Oilers hung on to win that affair in Denver, then took three points from their next two contests largely due to an eruption of offence. But those results were something of a mirage as the club got significantly outshot in each game, and all too soon that caught up with them. Around mid-month both netminders lost their magician’s license for a time, and the goals against started to pile up at an alarming rate. 29 of them over 6 games in fact, at least 4 in each game, all of which were lost in regulation.

Again showing a season and a half’s worth of data to show the extremes that have ruled during the Hitchcock Era. Let’s start with Goals Against, relatively steady if poor under Todd McLellan at 30-36 per segment. Whereas Hitchcock’s Oilers blew the doors off with just 21 GA in his first segment before ballooning to an awful 40 in his second.

Underlying that was the team’s brutal shot differential, -93 over the ten games. Rounding, an ugly 35 against per game, just 25 for. Bad as the Oilers GoalsFor% was at 44.4%, their Shots For% was even worse at 42.2%. One weird result was the team had its best PDO (shooting + save percentage) in the last season and a half, a result which usually pushes a winning record but not this time. Alas, Edmonton’s soaring 12.6% shooting percentage was accomplished on too few shots, and their ugly .884 team save percentage on too many.

Let’s start with that sorry picture first:

(Adapted from NHL.com. Team leaders circled in orange.)

Even the better row of numbers — Mikko Koskinen’s — is not in the least bit pretty. Combine the two, add in a trio of empty net goals ceded in consecutive games just 7, 8, and 12 seconds after the respective goalie pulls, and it’s downright ugly. The usual caveats apply: much as goalies don’t own sole credit for Wins and Losses, neither are such defensive stats as save percentage and goals against average entirely on their shoulders. The goalies get the credit, or the “credit” as the case may be, but to a significant extent it’s on the team. Sans Klefbom and Russell, the Oilers were a mess behind the blueline and struggled to move the puck out of there.

Related: Goals Against rates per 60 minutes of 5v5 play through 40 GP.

Pretty clear the Oil are missing those guys. Eventually, some seven games after the injuries, Peter Chiarelli took steps to address the situation. Strange timing, reminiscent of the Al Montoya trade last season. Identify a need, then wait a month before addressing it.

The guy on the bottom of that list, Darnell Nurse, has taken on increased ice time and responsibility, and had a bad stretch in his own zone. He did, however, blossom in the o-zone both on the powerplay and at even strength. More shots than the next two defencemen combined, more points than the next three. Look at that ice time, though.

A long list of active d-men over the stretch, what with two guys hurt, two traded, two acquired, and one called up.

Up front, the Oilers have been getting fabulous production from their very top players, and a whole lot of meh further down the line-up.

This list dominated by the Big Three, who are scoring at an impressive rate, 20 goals among them over the 10 games. Among the others, Alex Chiasson managed 4 in just 7 games before getting hurt, while the other dozen guys mustered just 4 among them, with no more than 1 goal from any of them. The Oilers’ lack of scoring depth is both real and spectacular.

So too is their scoring height. Connor McDavid added 13 assists to his 7 goals, thus contributing to 63% of Edmonton’s goals during the segment. On the season he’s got 61 points on just 113 Edmonton goals, or 54%. To put that in perspective, the NHLer currently in second place in this category is none other than Leon Draisaitl, who has scored points on a shade over 45% of his team’s goals this season, including 53% in their most recent 10 game segment. It’s both a spectacular achievement by the Oilers top guns and a clarion call trumpeting the impotence of the supporting cast that Chiarelli has assembled.

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We close in our usual fashion by reviewing the last ten games through the lens of our own subjective ratings here at the Cult of Hockey. Regular readers will know that we grade on a scale of 1 to 10, the performance of every Edmonton Oilers player in every game the team plays, based on a combination of observation and interpretation of statistical output. Here are average grades for Games 31-40 along with our customary thumbnail comment summarizing each player’s contribution over that span:

In a must-win game, the Edmonton Oilers actually won. They out-chanced the Arizona Coyotes, got some puck luck, and got a great game out of the top line of McDavid, Draisaitl and Zack Kassian. Yes, Zack Kassian! David Staples and Bruce McCurdy of the Cult of Hockey dog in.

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